Abstract: Life Cycle Thinking and Assessment becomes increasingly more important. This is especially the case for renewable energy technologies. Life Cycle
Assessment respectively ecobalances are of great interest, because there are high expectations regarding the sustainability of these technologies.
Life Cycle Assessment is a proven and within the ISO 14040 internationally standardized method. In particular the development stage of a technology plays an important role in case of Life Cycle Assessment, because changes could still be taken into consideration.
In the framework of a scientific study, which has been done at the chair of Energy Systems and Energy Economics at the Ruhr- University Bochum, a Life Cycle Assessment under energetic aspects of a fictitious offshore wind park results in an energetic payback period of 5 months.
In a similar way analysis could be done for ocean energy technologies.
